The Shed Calls on Artists to Think Big

The Shed’s Open Call commissioning program allows early-career artists to work on a grand scale. Assistant curator Dejá Belardo talks to participating artists Sandy Williams IV and Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez, recipient of the 2025 Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize. Quiñonez will present his new work this summer in the group exhibition, Open Call: Portals, 27 June–24 August.

Dejá Belardo Sandy, you were in our last cohort of the Open Call program at The Shed and, Victor, you’re in our current one. How has the experience fostered what you do and the work you make?

Sandy Williams IV There are a number of reasons I applied to Open Call. Firstly, when I saw the budget was $15,000, I thought: ‘that’s the exact price of skywriting!’ I had already done one skywriting project in Virginia and had been looking for the next location. The Shed was the perfect partner for this project because they encourage you to dream big; the institution invites projects that go deeper than just aesthetics and encourages a connection to larger communities that are often marginalized.

DB Victor, it’s early on, and your show with us will open this summer, but what led you to apply and what has your experience been like so far?

Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez When I saw works by previous participants, I was really blown away by the projects and their social community aspect. That was the biggest draw for me. The fact that there was money to expand the project through programming was incredibly important. This is by far my most ambitious project to date. I’m speaking here for all Black and brown artists: I’ve worked with institutions that make you feel like you’re being tokenized, like they’re checking a box, because they only come and look for you during Hispanic Heritage Month or Black History Month. Then there are institutions that are the real deal, like The Shed.

DB Sandy, in previous projects, you had already worked on a monumental scale and you continued that with Open Call. What does working at that scale mean for you and what does it mean to work in the public realm?

SW I’ve been working in public art in earnest since 2017. In 2020, I had the chance to make my first ‘monumental’ project at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York. Doing these bigger public projects opens up a whole new world. The audience is not just liberal-leaning art-world viewers but everyone, in a way that is both complicated and beautiful. For me, the skywritings are like public-service announcements.

DB What does community-building and working across institutions mean for you? I know, Sandy, that you built a relationship with the Weeksville Heritage Center through your Open Call project.

SW My project, 40 ACRES: Weeksville, started with me hiring a skywriter to trace the dimensions of the historic Weeksville neighbourhood, one of the first free Black communities to be recognized in the country. It was established in the 1830s, when Black people were first given the right to own land. New York was one of the first states to give them that right and Weeksville thrived until the 1930s, when it lost its identity to urban renewal.

The skywriting was a way of holding space for that memory, but it also serves as a metaphor for the dissipation of that community. More recently, Weeksville has been remapped and reestablished as a historical community, but I think it is emblematic of Black neighbourhoods and Black cultures all over the country that have had such an impact on the American vernacular and our culture, something that often fails to be acknowledged.

DB Victor, what is your Open Call project?

VQ I’m creating a 20-foot-tall-by-15-foot-wide pyramid out of coolers. I want to make a huge monument dedicated to Indigenous cultures, honor the people that are vulnerable right now because of the political climate, and foster awareness of their humanity and resilience. Thinking about the rich ancestry of cultures from Aztec to Maya to Inca, in Central and South America, the pyramid is a symbol that reminds people that many of us were already here, so we’re not illegal. Laws change, wars happen, land gets lost, but humanity should never be lost.

DB Who are you collaborating with?

VQ I’m working with an organization called Make the Road New York that fights for immigration rights and supports undocumented workers. The project is called Elevar la Cultura, which means ‘raise up the culture’. We want to help vulnerable people be seen and have the rights to make an honest living. When you go to Corona, Queens, or Sunset Park, or even if you’re on the subway, you cons­tantly see people who are just starting out in this country with coolers. It really became a symbol for me; in US culture, the cooler means you’ve made it  – you’re celebrating the Fourth of July, you’re doing all these leisurely things. But, on the flipside, it’s a survival tool: you’re just trying to feed your family.

DB And you’re putting things inside the coolers?

VQ Yes, several of the coolers will be lined with textiles. It’s a nod to Chicano culture and the use of vibrant fabrics. But I’m going to be using fabrics of mixed heritage, from South and Central America and Haiti, as well as mud cloths from different parts of Africa, because I really want to show that this isn’t an immigration issue: this is a humanitarian issue. Even though the pyramid is associated with mostly Black and brown cultures, I feel like what’s inside these coolers represents a diaspora of people that has so much in common, not least resilience. Besides the textiles, there are also objects: ceramics, prayer hands, candles, healing stones and a lot of what you’d call ‘spiritual objects’. I’m also going to include fruit, flowers and some very festive, beautiful items that celebrate some of the things that we love to do as a people, to celebrate each other.

DB You both resurface and highlight important histories: how does being an agent of civic action sit alongside your day-to-day studio practice?

SW For me, understanding and digging through these histories is a way to contextualize our present. History is a framework for what’s going on right now. The problems that we’re facing have such deep historical roots.

VQ A lot of the subjects I take on are ones I’ve had to live through personally. When I was a child, my father was deported. For me, art is like therapy. Those experiences, among many others, really influenced me in a negative way. I turned to painting on the streets to try and stay out of trouble and find an outlet; I evolved from graffiti to murals. Instead of being eaten up by looking at political unrest on social media every day, I create work that speaks to it.

SW I relate to that so much. As many hats as I wear  – artist, filmmaker, professor –  I’m also a concerned citizen. I participate through my art. I’m one of so many people who care about our collective future and, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’. My work wants to be a part of that lineage and that bend.

DB What are the risks involved with making works in the public realm?

VQ Whether it’s film, music or visual arts, the works that impact us the most tend to be those which we clearly remember seeing for the first time. No matter if that feeling was anger or joy or sadness. Recently, I was awarded the Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize and created the ‘I.C.E. SCREAM’ series. The acronym I.C.E. is a play on immigration: ‘Inhumane and Cruelty Enforcement’. From a distance, you see brightly colored Mexican paletas, which draw you in immediately. But then you get to see something that you weren’t expecting. We can’t control how people react. Over the course of 30 years, I’ve had reactions that have been extremely inspiring, and I’ve also had people calling for my artwork to be removed.

SW I get a nervousness which excites me, because it makes me feel like I’m doing something important. When I make public artworks, there is the possibility of being misinterpreted, but there is always risk involved in encouraging change on that scale.

This article first appeared in Frieze Week New York magazine with the title ‘Blue Sky Thinking’. 

Further Information

Frieze New York, The Shed, 7 – 11 May, 2025. Tickets are on sale – don’t miss out, buy yours now. Alternatively, become a member to enjoy premier access, exclusive guided tours and more.

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^{Main image: Sandy Williams IV, 2023. Courtesy: The Shed, New York; photograph: Noel Woodford}